Disinherited Kosovo Albanians on the Run for Their Lives

By MIKE O'CONNOR

Published: August 9, 1998

PORNOC, Serbia, Aug. 8—
Gzim Shala looked around at the tufts of grass, the hard ground where they fought to grow, the skinny trees that gave his family campsite little shelter from the sun and the turgid stream nearby, blanketed by dancing insects.

''This is the best we could find,'' he said.

Until last week Mr. Shala was the proud head of his extended family, owner of a house, livestock and equipment earned in 20 years of farming. Now he is one of perhaps 100,000 ethnic Albanians driven from their homes by a Serbian offensive aimed at wresting control over central and western Kosovo from ethnic Albanian guerrillas fighting for an independent country.

The refugees have only the slimmest measure of protection against the disease and starvation that international aid officials fear is imminent. A United Nations official said today that the few doctors who have reached refugees estimate 50 percent of children suffer dehydration and the first effects of malnutrition.

Mr. Shala's family ran through Serbian artillery, walked over mountains for four days and set up camp here. The youngest of his clan of 16 is 1, the oldest 77.

''We have the clothes we're wearing, three plates and two forks,'' he said. ''One of those international aid groups, I think it was the Germans, gave us five blankets.''

With food and four foam mats and plastic sheets they got from ethnic Albanian villagers nearby, they can survive in the open, for now, as the rain has been light so far.

Two of the Shala children broke out in festering sores on Friday. The group does not know when, or if, new artillery fire will force renewed flight. They live off moldy bread and green peppers cooked on coals from a fire built between two rocks.

''This is only the beginning,'' Mr. Shala said. ''There will be more hunger and disease because we can't go back home. Everything there is gone, burned. And if we go back the police will kill us.''

He added that Albanians who returned to one village, Glarev, were killed. ''We saw that village burning on the way here,'' he said.

In the Kosovo Albanians' tightknit society, many refugee families have been taken in by relatives or strangers. But they and their benefactors are relying on a collapsed economy. The villages where most have found shelter are already lacking in food, clean water and medical care.

Refugee officials spoke only on condition of anonymity, for fear of endangering aid efforts already hurt by Government interference. They acknowledged that they were unprepared for such a massive problem.

''We don't have the personnel to go out there and even assess the situation properly,'' said one United Nations official.

In the village of Prapa Can, where refugees have swelled the population to 3,500 from 1,000, Dr. Shyt Shala's delivery room has a rough concrete floor, a single light bulb and a candle when the electricity goes out.

''I suppose I see about 30 women a day for prenatal care and delivery,'' Dr. Shala said. ''Three are in labor here now, but I have only five sets of sterile gloves, so by tomorrow we'll be back to primitive medicine.''

''We ran out of the normal prenatal medications like hormones and antibiotics about two weeks ago,'' added the doctor, who was almost too tired to speak. That was just after the offensive began, he explained. ''If there is a premature birth, we can't get the mother to a real clinic. Last night and a week ago a baby died because we couldn't help them.''

The Government considers this enemy territory, as it does other refugee enclaves. Indeed, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs roughly nine to one in this impoverished province of two million, and most of them support the rebels. Many refugee families are lacking young men, who they say stayed behind to fight.

No Western government supports the rebels' aim of independence. For the heavily armed Serbian police officers and Yugoslav soldiers fighting for the Government, that is a green light to regain control of the territory -- by any means.

Military bunkers, heavy machine guns, armored personnel carriers and thousands of police officers now control the roads leading from remaining rebel enclaves, and from cities with the food and medicine that the refugees need.

Long before the offensive, many villages where the rebels operated were terribly poor, subsisting on local agriculture and money sent from relatives working abroad. Relief officials say the villagers sheltering refugees can provide only a roof and a few days' food. Before the current flood, there were more than 167,000 refugees in Kosovo, most of them living with other families.

In the village of Isniq, local officials said the normal population of 5,300 has taken in 4,460 refugees. ''In this house there is food for three or four days, if we are careful,'' said Zoje Hajdaraj, one of 36 refugees added to a household of 8.

-------------------- Separatists Lose Key Site

PRISTINA, Serbia, Aug. 8 (Reuters) -- Separatist guerrillas in Kosovo appeared today to have lost an important regional headquarters to Serbian security forces.

The Kosovo Information Center, linked to the leading pro-independence Albanian party, said Serbian forces had swept into Likovac village on Thursday night after hammering it with artillery for two days.

Serbian troops then turned Likovac and nearby hamlets ''into a bonfire,'' the center reported. It described them pursuing a scorched-earth policy against areas recaptured from guerrillas.

It was the latest setback for the separatists, who have been pushed back into remote hills along with tens of thousands of refugees who say their homes were shelled and torched without military purpose.

Security forces are also closing in on guerrilla redoubts in the far west, notably Junik, near Albania.

Photo: Serbian fire is forcing ethnic Albanians into the hills of Kosovo. This trio was part of a family encamped in the village of Pornoc. (Marco Di Lauro for The New York Times) Map showing the location of Pornoc Serbia: Pornoc offers a temporary haven for Kosovo Albanian refugees.